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Thursday, January 19, 2012

LastPass is an online password manager that allows you to securely store all your passwords and access them from anywhere. As the developers of LastPass say, it is the last password you’ll have to remember.

You can use LastPass to store your usernames and passwords for websites and then log in to these sites with one click. All the data stored in LastPass is automatically synchronized and you can access it from any Windows, Linux, or Mac computer using a web browser extension, and most of the popular smartphone operating systems, such as Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry. All of your data for LastPass is encrypted locally on your computer before it is sent to the LastPass servers and only your master LastPass password can unlock it. You can also store more than just usernames and passwords in LastPass. Any confidential data can be stored in LastPass.

The default method of accessing your encrypted information stored in LastPass is online using a web browser extension. However, what do you do if you need to access some information from your LastPass vault and you’re using a computer without an internet connection? LastPass Pocket is a portable program that allows you download all your LastPass data from the server and store it in a secure, encrypted file you can save to a USB flash drive and take with you.

There are some limitations of LastPass Pocket. One limitation is it only allows you to view the data in your LastPass vault. You can edit the entries that are downloaded into LastPass Pocket from your online vault, but the entries cannot be uploaded back into your LastPass vault and they are only available as long as LastPass Pocket is open. In order to save any changed or added entries and have offline access to your entries when you reopen LastPass Pocket, you must export your vault to a locally saved encrypted file. Another limitation of LastPass Pocket is that once you export your data to a locally encrypted file and then open it again in LastPass Pocket, you cannot add or edit entries. You can only view entries and copy information from the entries. It is recommended that you use LastPass Pocket only for viewing your entries, not as an editable, offline password vault.

That said, we will show you how to download your LastPass vault into LastPass Pocket, add an entry, and export the data into a secure, locally encrypted file.

Download the pocket.exe file (the link is at the end of this article) and save it to a USB flash drive or external drive. Double-click the pocket.exe file to run LastPass Pocket.

The Open Encrypted Data dialog box displays. Enter your Email and Password for your LastPass vault. For Data Location, select Load my data from LastPass.com. Use the check boxes next to Remember? to have LastPass pocket remember the information entered on this dialog box, if desired. We don’t recommend having LastPass Pocket remember your password. If you have to enter it every time, it is more secure. Click Open.

Your LastPass vault is downloaded from the LastPass website and extracted into LastPass Pocket.

NOTE: The group structure of your vault may look different. We converted a KeePass file to LastPass, so the groups were created from the groups in KeePass.

You can add items to your local vault and edit items you downloaded. For example, to add a secure note, select Add Secure Note from the Edit menu.

NOTE: Remember, that you can only add and edit items when you initially download your vault into LastPass Pocket. Once you export you data (explained later in this article) and open it again, you cannot edit the vault anymore.

The Add Secure Note dialog box displays. Enter a Name for the note and select a Group from the drop-down list. Enter the private information you want to store for this note in the Notes box. If you want to have to enter your password again to access this note in LastPass Pocket, select the Require Password Reprompt check box. Click OK.

The secure note is added to the Secure Notes group.

To save the data in your vault to a local, secure file, that you can access when you are not online, select Export from the File menu.

On the Export Your Data dialog box, select whether you want to Export an encrypted copy of your data or Export a plain text copy of your data in CSV format. We recommend you choose to export your data to an encrypted file. If you export to plain text, your data will NOT be protected at all.

Enter the password for your vault in the Password edit box.

Use the Browse button to select a location for the encrypted XML file. We stored it on the USB flash drive with the pocket.exe file. No one can access your encrypted vault without your main password.

If you have exported your data before to the same file name, the following dialog box displays. Click OK to replace the file with the updated data.

A dialog box displays when your data has been successfully exported.

Now, when you open LastPass Pocket again, or when you select Open Encrypted Data from the File menu within the program, you can choose to open the encrypted vault data you saved locally. To do this, select the Load my data from a file on my computer radio button next to Data Location. Click the Browse button to select the file.

On the Specify the location of your data file, navigate to where you exported the encrypted data file, select it, and click Open.

The path to your encrypted file displays in the edit box. Click Open to import the data back into LastPass Pocket.

LastPass is also available in a portable version that can be installed into the portable versions of Firefox and Chrome. This is a convenient option to securely access your LastPass vault if you often use Internet cafes or go online from untrusted computers. See the LastPass Portable manual for more information about downloading and installing the portable versions of Firefox and Chrome and installing the LastPass plugins.

The passwords and other information are downloaded to the local system from where they can be accessed as long as the application stays open.

If you close the program again the information are not available anymore, unless they are exported to the local system. The option to export all passwords is available by clicking on File > Export.

The passwords can be saved in an encrypted file, that is protected by the LastPass master password, or a plain text copy that is not protected and readable by anyone with access to the computer. Once the passwords have been exported they can be loaded back into the password manager at anytime, even if there is no Internet access available at that time.

All information can be copied to the clipboard for use in other programs or services.

Last Pass Pocket is an interesting tool for Last Pass users who need offline access to their passwords. The password manager is available for Windows and Mac only. Windows users can download a 32-bit or 64-bit edition of the portable program. (via)

There is hardly any other browser extension/add-on that can make internet browsing experience as convenient as Lastpass. As the developers of this utility say, the last password you’ll ever need to remember, and for months LastPass has been doing that for me.

However, there is a tiny nuisance, LastPass has made it a habit in me to not remember any passwords, since I give them to trusty-old LastPass and move on. So if I am using some other computer, it really becomes frustrating trying to guess the password to my not-so-much-used accounts. For times like these, consider using LastPass Pocket.

This portable application can gather all your login information from either your Lastpass.com account or an encrypted file on your hard-drive, and display that information in a simple interface.

It is as simple as you can manage it to be. On the initial level, you are asked to either input your LastPass credentials, or supply the path to the encrypted data file on your local file system. You can also choose to remember the file path or email and password for login. The main interface itself offers stored passwords categorized in All, Favorites, Secure Notes etc, to name a few. You can choose to copy almost any field from the View menu, and finally you can reveal all passwords if you need something out of them (master password input is again required for this).

LastPass Pocket is a free, portable application from LastPass’ developers that can serve both an offline storage vault and backup for your passwords. It works with both 32- and 64-bit operating systems, and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.